Palm muting questions and answers

Q. I play in a Punk band, and we use a lot of fast palm muting. While I can palm mute while strumming down at a fairly rapid rate, if I could alternate my strumming direction it would be a lot easier. I have been working on it for about a 3 months but I can not seem to mute cleanly while strumming down and up consistently. Do you have any advice or exercises, or is better to just try and palm mute all down just at warp speed.

A. The answer is to palm mute all down at warp speed. That is what I call punk chops :) You will also get a different tone when strumming all down vs. down and up. The reason it is easier to strum down and up while not palm muting, is that your wrist and arm are free to move. When palm muting, your right hand is locked in one position and you do not have as much range of motion. So if you are trying to strum 3 strings while palm muting a chord, your wrist has to struggle as it goes down and up, extending to the extremes of its range of motion. You will sometimes be able to palm mute 2 strings while strumming down and up. The trick is to very lightly touch your right hand to the strings at the edge of the bridge. Very lightly, so that your hand is not locked down, and can move more freely than if you where really resting.

Sometimes the very fast sounds that you are hearing, are just a single strings, with an occasional un-palm muted chord jab. Many punk and heavy metal bands use this technique. So if you where playing a power chord with the root on the 6th string, you would palm mute and play only the 6th string. Keep your fingers in the shape of the power chord as you are doing this, because you will want to already have your fingers down for when you do throw in those jabs. You can get extremely fast playing palm muted single strings down and up. If you are playing some cover tunes and are trying to decide whether pick down and up or all down, try to listen for the tone and the number of notes you hear at one time. If you are hearing a very consistent tone and more that one note, it is all down strums. Just try to relax your hand as much as possible when trying to do extremely fast down strums. The tendency is to tense up. The result will be that you will hurt yourself.

Page 2, single string palm muting

Page 1, Palm muting chords